Bead, Read, Eat and Need

I realized this morning that it's been a whole month since I last posted.  Time sure flies when you're having fun, and I have been having way too much fun lately. 

Thought I'd share what's on my table today, and it just so happened to rhyme:  Bead, Read and Eat.  Four words just works better, though, so I added one more since eat doesn't rhyme quite as well with bead and need.

BEAD:  I realized how much I love working with Amethyst, and how quickly it seems to sell.  I have nothing gorgeous in Amethyst in my finished jewelry inventory so the next few days I'll remedy that situation. 

Last night, while watching The Juror I made an Amethyst necklace and bracelet.  I wanted it to be all amethyst, but decided at the last minute to add the lavender freshwater pearls.  I'm still debating what kind of clasp to add.  I SO love the facetted coin shapped beads.

READ:  What I'm reading lately is Torch Fired Enamel Jewelry: A Workshop in Painting With Fire by Barbara Lewis.  I love the look of enamel, and since I don't have a kiln but I do have a torch, this method is one I could easily do.  As soon as I buy some enamels!  I have to admit that I'm not at all into the style of jewelry created in the projects section of this book.  But I have some of my own ideas of what I'd like to enamel and how I want it to look.  C-Coop makes gorgous jewelry components (and the owner lives in Duluth, Minnesota!) and I'd like to try my hand at making similar pieces like the pendant on the left. 

EAT:  Not really a healthy lunch, but I bought some Cheese Curls (or Cheesy Poofs, as Cartman calls them) the other day when I stopped at Cub for my Cappacino.  This is why grocery shopping while hungry is a bad idea.  Oh well, once in a while we have to eat something bad, right?  I love the Cappacino that comes in a red plastic container.  I'd have to go upstairs to read the label so I'll leave it at that.  The French Vanilla flavor is my favorite.  I love it because I can heat some water in the microwave and stir it in.  No fuss, and no cooking, is my motto these days.  Yesterday I had a breakfast bar for lunch.  Yes, I'm lazy.  Not sure when that happened, but I can't deny it.

NEED:  There are so many things I could write about under this heading.  There are so many things I should be doing, like cleaning the house and cooking a decent meal.  But should is not Need, is it?  Lately all I do is what I WANT to do.  Sounds like heaven, right?  Except that I don't think we were built to be so self-indulgent. 

I get nothing done during the day except washing a few loads of laundry.  I do have my sales tax ready to file, and just need to run a few reports to get my business income taxes done.  I spend too much time on the computer.  Everything I need to do relies on using the computer, but when I turn the computer on, it sucks my brains out.  Even the laundry sits in the washer or dryer for hours at a time. 

So what I need to do is write a task list for the week or day and make sure those items get done before I can take any time for what I want to do. 

Of course, I've made this resolution many times before.

The Hard Questions

What do I want to be?  And where did the day go?
The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron is a book I was familiar with from my days as a writer.  I bought the book many years ago but never did the morning pages or any of the exercises that are supposed to help you get unblocked and become more creative.  Last week I checked it out of the library.

Since being laid off from my day job in early December, I've struggled with the most difficult of questions:  "What am I going to do with the rest of my life?"  Having been a capable mainframe programmer and database administrator, I am now obsolete.  For the second time in my career.  I need to work for another 15 years, but I'm not sure I want to jump in to the technology pool and try it again.

This morning, I wrote my three morning pages as required by the book The Artist's Way despite my writing hand alternating between falling asleep and cramps.  Writing the pages by hand puts you in touch with your subconscious mind.  You aren't supposed to edit your words or think too much about what you want to say because it's supposed to be a stream of consciousness thing.  With morning pages, it doesn't matter what you write, as long as you write three pages fast.  There are exercises for each week (12 weeks in all) that I haven't started yet, but I have read them and they are in the back of my mind.  The focus of the first week is "Recovering a sense of safety"; what attitudes and core beliefs might be hindering my inner artist child from feeling safe.  Like when a parent has said, "You can't make a living as a writer; you need a REAL job to pay the bills!"

A REAL job.

When I think back on my work life over the past 12 years, I know I started out happy and effective and full of positive energy.  I'm an oldest child and was always the star performer, especially at work.  I'm not sure when that changed.  In the past couple of years, I had become moody, frustrated, jealous, angry, unhappy, abandoned.  My future prospects had gone down the drain with the mainframe computer. 

Yesterday I ran errands:  post office, library and bead store.  When I got to the post office, I discovered I had left the bills on the kitchen counter at home.  At the library, I picked up a book on chip carving for my Dad, and browsed through a few shelves for myself.  I picked out more books on marketing and crafting as a business.  My last errand was to get the 2011 midwest arts and craft fair guide which I expected to find at the local bead store.  They don't carry it, but I managed to find a couple of things I didn't know I needed instead.  I also chit-chatted with the clerk: what classes did she teach, where does she sell her jewelry, blah, blah, blah.

When did I become such an extrovert?  The clerk's eyes glazed over more than once. 
However, if I hadn't been in such a chatty mood, I wouldn't have learned that the store might need someone to teach a seed bead-weaving class this summer.  I left my card.  I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed teaching beading since I haven't done it for a few years.  Thinking about it today I realized a bracelet I designed would be the perfect project for a beginners class in Peyote stitch.

The Artist's Way has a subtitle that says "A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity." 

Maybe I'm on my way....

Cheers!